A Room With a View
by Persephone13
Summary: Ah...sometime post-movie; Clarice has been committed and Dr. Lector is still at large. Slightly suggestive of violence...here it is...finally finished.
1. Blunt Dissection

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Just as a forethought...this is set to take place after the movie Hannibal, but not the book. The book already has an ending; a very appropriate, articulate one...the movie, however, was just too open-ended and tempting to add to.   
  
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I would like to note that I have made some minor grammatical and lingual revisions...both those mentioned to me by reveiwers and those glaring errors that I have only just noticed and cannot see soon enough without the aid of a spellchecker. (Damn WordPad documents.) I must also add that I'm flattered that you were reading so closely as to notice the spelling mistakes.   
  
Also, I have been having some truly hellish difficulties with the site allowing me to upload. My apologies and thanks to those of you so gracious as to point out the mixed chapters...I'm working on getting them straightened out...hopefully soon! Please let me know if there are any problems...!  
  
And so...  
  
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CHAPTER 1  
  
The echoes rose and fell and then diminished as the various gaurds and custodians came and went through the lower corridors of the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, finishing their evening rounds. In the last cell, Clarice Starling sits with her back to the cold wall, with the bars to her right. Her breath is as steady and slow as though she were sleeping, and her face is cold and empty. She is reading a well-worn copy of Voltaire's Candide.   
She knows the story well, yet she would appear to be completely engrossed. And when Fredrick Chilton comes merrily down the hallway, she can smell the foul cologne in which he apparently bathes even before she hears the swaggering gait of his graceless step. She shows no sign of hearing him.   
"I've been informed," he began pompously, pausing for emphasis, apparently, although he achieved little more than sounding rather like a schoolboy with a dirty rumour that he was just dying to spread along, "that you have not been behaving yourself, Miss Starling. I don't think that you appreciate where you are...and why." He stood back on his heels before going on, hands behind his back as he paced in front of her cell. She had stood by this point, and was smiling at him dimly, with her head tilted to the left.  
He stopped to glance lewdly at her shapely form, scarcely disguised by the drab prison jumpsuit. She noted this quietly. He went on. "You haven't been injustly confined, Miss Starling, in fact, this proves exactly what I've always belived; that law is a man's job." He smirked self-contently. She smiled at him, thinking that the statement of gender fairly much ruled himself out as well.  
Chilton smiled at her patronizingly. "I don't suppose that you're going to tell me why you did what you did to that unfortunate gentleman, now are you?" He blinked altogether too frequently when he spoke, Clarice noticed. She kept looking at him, hoping that he would draw his own conclusions.  
Chilton went on, apparently speaking rhetorically, or at least for his own benefit, which he did most of the time anyway.  
"A rancher, wasn't he...? Oh yes, he had quite a business. Very popular amoungst the town's grocers, I belive...his products were always fresh and he sold them for a modest price." Had Fredrick Chilton been even fractionally less dense than he was, he might have seen her right cheek flutter and her teeth clench at the word "products". The gentleman in question had slaughtered pigs and sheep, mostly the young, and had a profitable business selling the animals to butchers in the area. The meat was tender because he kept his livestock quite away from the outside world, in safe, horrid little pens.  
And when she had gone to investigate the ranch, on request by the humane society, on the charges of poor treatment of livestock, the man had been most unplesent with her, first treating her flippantly as though she were a young child, then denying all charges and threatening her bombastically before finally attempting to "beat some respect for her betters into her meddling hide". She had killed him then, in self-defense, and slit him from crotch to chin with a filet knife that she had found in the drawer. To her displeasure, the knife had been obviously in desperate need of a whetstone and was somewhat dull.  
But she had managed to remove his heart; and she packed it neatly in butcher paper and put it in with his meatstocks in the store freezer to be shipped to the butchers the next day.  
She refused to disclose it's location; and she was convicted of murder in the third degree, with some lovely little mutilation charges tacked on...  
Chilton was wrapping up his lecture. "...nothing that I wouldn't expect from a woman hard-headed enough to converse with Hannibal Lector. Probably unstable to begin with..." at this he gave her a cloylingly sympathetic look "...so who could blame you for cracking, ay?"   
His signature ineloquence was faintly amusing, and Clarice Starling could not resist a tiny prod at his bloated self-confidence. Her voice was low when she spoke at last. "Are you going to tell me to what I owe the honour of this visit, Dr. Chilton? I can't imagine that you so often have the time to visit personally with your...patients." Her tone was only slightly mocking.  
A sudden frown gave away his annoyance. "I assure you, Starling, that I am not here merely for pleasure." Another leer at her legs. "Someone's been asking about you; apparently interested in researching female psychosis. I do hope that you won't embarress me or my establishment..." He trailed off, and she waited patiently, stepping a little closer. "Why, certainly, Dr. Chilton, sir, I'd be happy to help you improve your appearence!" So perfect was her inclination that he nearly missed the pointed sarcasm.   
He, too, stepped closer, and she picked up the scent of his lunch on his breath: roast beef. He did not brush his teeth regularly; bits of food were caught between them. "Don't you mock me..." he warned. She stepped back, nodded her head courteously, and folded her fingers in front of her. Fredrick Chilton puffed himself up like a toad and went down the hall after informing her to wait for her visitor. She was to be ready within the hour. 


	2. Company At Last

Clarice Starling thought that she recognized the graceful pattern of the steady footfalls coming down the corridor. She heard a voice, deftly concealing itself as it instructed Dr. Chilton to wait behind. She heard the annoyance in Chilton's haughty tone as he stalked off, back to his office. She smiled.  
  
She had put her book away and was waiting with the light in her cell set to an almost unintimidating glow. It was only polite not to frighten one's guests, she supposed, and it wouldn't do to have one's guests squinting in the dark.  
  
The man who she next saw was dark and trim, and moved with feral grace as he approached her cell. He had removed the hazel contact lenses just as he came into her veiw and out of Chilton's. She saw his pupils, startled by the sudden exposure to light, contract rapidly; redly. The irises around them were deep maroon...not a common shade of eye, and it gave Hannibal Lector away. But that was, of course, what he had intended.  
  
He smiled, still not dropping his disguise, knowing that Chilton, however imperceptive he was, was monitoring something from somewhere. He was a prying man, Fredrick Chilton, and insects of his caliber were not to be taken too lightly.  
  
Clarice was rather startled, even pleased, to see the wanted Dr. Lector daring to so boldly return to his very own former cell while still at large. He spoke before her astonishment could register on her face. His voice was as fluid as ever before; if moderately covered with a false accent that very few people could have deciphered.  
  
"My name is Doctor Charon, Miss Starling," he said, extending his hand, and she recognized the reference to the poet Dante. She shook his hand, still slightly shocked, nodding because she could think of nothing to say. "I'd like to talk with you, if I may..." His strange eyes flickered slightly with amusement, seeing her startle at the perfect imitation of her own inflection, if not tone, from all those years ago.  
  
"Yes...of course..."  
  
"Perhaps Mr. Chilton informed you as to my intentions?" He raised his eyebrows quizzically.  
  
"He did...yes. Well, somewhat."  
  
"And I trust, then, that you are willing to answer my questions to the best of your ability?" He waited.  
  
"I am."  
  
Dr. Lector drew himself up a little, never taking his eyes from hers; not blinking at all.  
  
"Tell me...do they treat you well here?"  
  
Starling had not been entirely prepared for the question, and her face fluttered once as she tried to answer. "Moderately so, I would presume, Dr...Charon." He smiled. It was a crooked sort of smile. "And you feel that you have been justly confined...?"  
  
"No"  
  
"Really? Do elaborate, Miss Starling, how do you feel about your incarceration?"  
  
"I couldn't say; really, personally, I'd say that I feel that it's irrelevent. I'm no worse off here then anywhere else."  
  
He tilted his face slightly, and she mirrored the movement unconciously. His voice was very low, but her ears, grown keener from years in prison, picked up the subtle words easily.  
  
"Would you like to see Dr. Chilton in a great deal of pain?"  
  
Her face faltered a little. The thought did appeal to her, but her tenacious moral integrity gave her a stab of peculiar guilt.  
  
"Answer the question, please..." This was well within the normal range of human hearing.  
  
She bit a little at the inside of her lip before responding. There was no point in trying to be evasive. Hannibal Lector was entirely too perceptive for that. "Yes."  
  
She looked at the sparks flying into the darkness behind his eyes and she too did not blink. He smiled at her perhaps more warmly then he smiled at anyone; but nevertheless with a chilly sort of humour.  
  
"That is all, for now, but you may expect me to return shortly. Within the week, without a doubt." With that he went, giving her a curt nod of farewell.  
  
Starling sat on her bed with the light turned down; thinking of cannibalism. 


	3. Reflections

For the next few days, Chilton made a nuisance of himself, asking her incessantly about the details of her little interveiw with Dr. Charon. When she refused to comment, he threatened to take her books away, which made her laugh. After a while, he'd left her alone, amusing himself with slobbering all over a new, young, female orderly, although he would come by now and again to leer at Starling or to tell her with glee what a bad girl she'd been for mocking him. Clarice wondered what sort of woman would be interested in Fredrick Chilton.  
  
Precisely six days from her visit from Hannibal Lector, Chilton came striding down the corridor, ignoring the hisses and catcalls from the prisoners. "Your visitor is here again, Miss Starling," he informed her with a snort, and then, with a greasy smile plastered on his greedy little face, he held out a plain envelope of standard letter size toward her. It was almost, but not quite, within an arm's reach of the bars. She had no doubt that he had already read whatever might be inside.  
  
"This came in the mail today, with instructions to give it to you." His slippery grin faltered at the corners as she politely smiled, ignoring his words. He thrust the envelope through the bars, recoiling his hand abruptly as one would from a feral animal.  
  
She took the envelope calmly, folded it carefully after noting the sloppy steam-and-re-tape job that he had done with the seal, and tucked it into her pillow. "Thank you, Dr. Chilton; I'll be sure to read it later." He frowned. "Don't you want to read it now?" "No." She graced him with a chilly smile that made him snort again, and then, with an exasperated flutter of his hand, he left her to her silent chamber.  
  
*****  
  
This time, Dr. Lector had foregone the hazel contact lenses and was simply wearing dark glasses. He removed these once he was in the flourescent glow of the hallway. He smiled faintly when he spoke. "Did you get my letter?"  
  
"Yes, Dr. Charon, I did...I haven't read it yet...Chilton had already taken the liberty of opening it for me."  
  
Hannibal smirked a little. "He's an interesting man, isn't he, Starling? Have you thought about what we discussed previously?"  
  
"About Chilton, sir? I have, in fact." Her face had a mixture of anticipatory guilt and primal amusement painted upon it. She had been thinking about Chilton; especially about how much more interesting he'd be if he were...cut down to size. She smiled coldly, inwardly, at the concept.  
  
Hannibal smiled, showing teeth, now, and they were very white. "I'm not going to make you decide his fate, of course, Clarice, I wouldn't want to mar that pristine moral conviction that you hold so highly." Clarice was not entirely certain that he was not trying to be cutting. It was always difficult to tell with Hannibal Lector.  
  
Clarice inhaled deeply and held her breath for a moment before organizing her thoughts. "Would you like me to look at your letter now, Dr. Charon?"  
  
"Go ahead, it doesn't matter, really, it's only a front...more or less to distract Chilton's prying eyes. You may open it whenever you wish...you will please excuse me; I have a pressing arrangement that I cannot be late for. I will return somewhat later on." He left her on that, and walked lesiurely up the corridor, hands folded neatly behind him, moving at a gentle pace as though he were strolling in the park amidst fragrant blossoms, smiling gently at the prisoners who silenced and withdrew from his prescence. The insane seemed to be able see more easily through the chinks in his human disguise, Clarice thought, much better than anyone stable and compansating. Or perhaps he simply commanded more respect from the mad than Fredrick Chilton could with his own haughty swagger and air of pitible contemptousness.  
  
When she had heard the double gates swing open and then shut again, and heard the footsteps recede into the eerie, distant hollowness that was the free and unseen world, Clarice reached into her pillowcase and withdrew the plain-looking envelope. Inside it was a small, smooth slip of folded vellum paper, and the writing on it was immistakeably perfect; distinctly recognizable to her, and obviously done with a good pen and expensive ink. She grinned to herself at this. Hannibal Lector had always had a weakness for flourish.  
  
He hadn't been bluffing; the letter was a front indeed, just a few breif comments reveiws of whatever ersatz organization that he was telling Chilton that he was from.  
  
There was a small postscript at the end of the letter, however, which said:  
  
P.S. Dr. Chilton tells me that the cells are cleaned once a week...your turn is today, in fact. He will be escorting you to a holding cell on the second floor sometime after noon.  
  
She read the lines to herself several times before re-folding the letter and putting it inside the front cover of Candide and putting the book back on the neat stack of assorted volumes. The envelope she discarded in the largely barren wastebasket.  
  
She wasn't permitted a watch, but a glance at the large analog clock just outside of her cell on the left, perpendicular wall informed her that it was just now 12:01 PM. After noon, anyway. Clarice lay on her bunk and closed her eyes.  
  
******  
  
She was disturbed by the voice of Dr. Chilton as he called her name. She had heard him coming for several seconds before he arrived, but she gave no sign. "Miss Starling, would you please come to the bars and put these on?" His voice was patronizing, his words spoken as one might address a misbehaving child, rather than an allegedly unstable murderer.  
  
Clarice opened her eyes to see that Chilton was extending a pair of gleaming handcuffs, his feet kept at well more a safe distance from her cell. Certainly brave enough around caged tigers, she thought wryly, but he wouldn't last five minutes in the jungle. She stood wordlessly and took the cuffs. For one moment, and one moment only, she glimpsed the slightest flicker of movement reflected in the shining metal. At first, she thought that it was Chilton, but then she saw eyes that were not Chilton's at all. Her heart jumped, but then she was still, and held her breath...Chilton did not notice her breathing, but he saw her eyes widen...  
  
It was a little too late by then, for Dr. Lector had already reached around and put his left hand around Chilton's throat so that his slender fingers were angled evilly into the taller man's windpipe. The skin dented slightly and Chilton gasped damply, his eyes scampering from one image to the next like small and frightened creatures inside of his head. Hannibal smiled and looked at Chilton's right ear as though he had never seen anything as fascinating.  
  
Clarice could see the faint scar on his wrist where his hand had been reattached. It was a nice job, actually; one could hardly tell that it had once been completely severed. She wondered where he had found such a good surgeon, one whom would have kept his identity secret...then she realized that he must have sewn the hand on himself. He was a man of many talents...  
  
He pushed a little harder on Chilton's throat, until little crescents formed around his nails and his charge began to bleed. Chilton choked sickenly as Hannibal pulled the keys out of the man's belt without taking his eyes from his examination of Chilton's right ear. He calmly unlocked Clarice's cell and shoved the man violently inside, directly into Clarice.  
  
Without a moment's consideration, the cuffs were around Chilton's wrists and his face was muffled in the cotton pillow. She felt some satisfaction to think of how humiliating this must be for the pompous creature. Dr. Lector was smiling, rubbing his bloody fingertips with the thumb of the same hand. Fredrick Chilton twitched a little, and then he slipped easily into unconciousness. 


	4. Escape

Hannibal picked up the larger, heavier man and slung him over his shoulder, looking as strange in his preternatural stregnth as ever. He walked down the hallway without a word, and she followed him.  
  
Clarice watched the prisoners withdraw from the harsh, jaundiced hall-light, and from Dr. Lector; the inmates retreating into the shadows of their cells, eyes gleaming like frightened sparks in the asylum darkness. She followed close at his side, feeling their eyes on her body, coveting...she was the only woman confined there...and only because Chilton, attending her court case and conviction, had requested it. Nostalgia had led her to accept, rather than be sent to the nearest woman's prison.  
  
When they reached the gates, Starlings muscles tensed, waiting for the attack, but none came. The she saw that the gaurds were slumped over in their seats, the doorman having slid down the wall, his legs out in front of him and his chin resting on his chest. She could not see if he was breathing, but there was a glisten of blood pooling between his legs, running in luxurious claret streams from his broken face. She did observe that most of the men were intact...they hadn't been bitten, mutilated, or...artistically arranged. She wasn't sure if this was caution on Dr. Lector's part, or merely utilitarianism.  
  
He dragged Chilton's unconcious body through the gates and tossed him lightly at Clarice's feet. She leapt back and heard bones crunch. Chilton moaned, and saliva came to the corners of his thin lips. Dr. Lector was busying himself with re-locking the gates when Chilton's eyes suddenly flew up, his arms flailing against the cuffs. He tried to scream, but his brain did not connect the thought and he merely gargled. His bounds hands, stretched out over his head, came precariously close to Hannibal's ankle...he managed to get a grip, and Clarice kicked Chilton, hard, in the side of the head. He released Dr. Lector and slid back into a somewhat deeper unconciousness. Panting and shaking, Clarice looked up; Dr. Lector smiled at her and lightly stepped over the prone man. Picking up Chilton by the chained wrists, he slung him over his shoulder. He pulled a syringe out of a pocket that Clarice had not even noticed and gave Chilton a shot of something presumably sedative.  
  
He might have done that earlier...Clarice thought with a twinge of irritation. Maybe he wanted to see how I'd react. She frowned. Dr. Lector turned to her. 


	5. La Dolce Vita

He was looking at her with an odd mixture of amusement and something like admiration for just a moment, and then he turned and continued up the stairs to Chilton's office. Clarice followed, pulling the heavy body behind her by the ankles. Its head made thick, unpleasent thuds as it went up and over the stairs, one by one.   
  
*****  
  
The sun on her face felt like the love of heaven itself. Outside of the stone and steel walls for the first time in several years, Clarice could do nothing but stare in awe at the incredible blues and greys of the autumn sky; the intense natural light that warmed her and tingled on her her clammy, colourless skin. Insects hummed and throbbed in fragrant, bittersweet patches of grass behind the gates, she could hear cars moving in the distance.   
Gazing at a patch of clouds, she felt her eyes fill with tears, but she had forgotten how to speak or think and merely walked, slowly, like an infant, shivering in the strange new nakedness of freedom. Then Hannibal's voice awoke her from her epiphany, and it was almost gentle, quiet, at least, for once.  
"The sun is beautiful, isn't it, Clarice?"  
Making no effort to hide the trembling in her voice, she said, "The most beautiful thing that I have ever seen, Dr. Lector. I had forgotten what real light looked like." Her eyes were on her own hands now, the skin translucent and glowing gold in the late afternoon light. He seemed to understand, and said nothing for a while, but then another sound, a harsher one, startled her to reason.  
It was the sound of sirens, growing rapidly nearer and nearer.  
"Now we really must go!" Dr. Lector took her arm a bit roughly and lead her around to the front of the building, to his car. It was low and round and black, non-descript and matte, but very sleek. The windows were dark, and the surface had a sensual, dull tone like that of a lizard's skin.  
Inside, it was cool and dim, and the upholstery smelled of crisp newness. Hannibal Lector drove extremely well and extremely quickly. She saw the speedometer hit ninety as they curled around the highway. The sirens receded into the background.  
  
*****  
  
When the police found Fredrick Chilton's body sixteen minutes later, he was slumped over in his chair at his desk. The terrified orderly whom had summoned the authorities was lurking just outside of the office, his face a mask of wide-eyed mortal terror; his skin shining wetly like a rotted fish. His left hand clutched at a cellular phone. One of the officers escorted him outside for questioning...three officers went on into Chilton's office; six more into the basement lock-off.  
They found only a few items disturbed in Chilton's office...the case files had been carefully picked through; an indeterminate few were missing. Little else was absent from the scene, except for some of Chilton's personal effects, including his watch, pocket knife, keys, several pens, a pair of sun-glasses, and some amount of his vital organs; tidy sutures closed the wounds snugly. There was hardly any blood anywhere, except small smears on Chilton's immediate person, and a little on the floor near the door, apparently a skid mark. Wedged in Chilton's throat was an oblong bottle of cheap cologne; one of the officers examined this with his nose wrinkled at the smell.  
Some evidence was taken from the site; a few snapshots; some blood samples. Fingerprinting was done but produced vague results. The perpetrator had been exceedingly careful about his or her hands.   
A building search recovered Chilton's master keys, but nothing else. All the prisoners except for Clarice Starling were intact and confined. When interveiwed, they lied, each vying for attention; not one of them offering any real assistance.  
  
*****  
"Where are we going, Dr. Lector?"  
"You may call me by my first name, Clarice."  
She tried again, "Where are we going, Hannibal?" "That depends, Clarice, on where we want to be." He didn't turn his eyes from the road ahead.   
She waited for a few seconds, wondering if he was going to offer any more information, but he was silent and she wasn't in the mood for mind games. She leaned back and sighed, and in the process dozed off to the soothing hum of the powerful automobile.  
  
*****  
"What do you suppose we should do, Frank?", Richard Ambling asked of his superior officer. Frank was tossing his bloodied latex gloves into a waste receptle. He shook his head.  
Richard followed him, peeling off his own autopsy gloves; leaving the chilly, antibacterially spotless morgue as quickly as possible. The hard heels of his shows rung out like iron bells on the slick floor. Frank looked Richard in the eye. "We aren't going to to anything, Rick; we've done our bit. The F.B.I. wants this one now...beyond our jurisdiction." His brow furrowed with faint contempt.   
Rick nodded. "Sometimes I'm a little jealous, what with the F.B.I. taking all the really...meaty...cases, but in this case, Frank, I'm grateful." His relived voice had just a hint of shame in it. Rick was generally a strong, good man who was an honest upholder of justice. And, in all truth, this particular case was exceedingly distasteful to him, because he couldn't make it right.   
It was things like these that made him question his work in the law enforcement services, but he never mentioned this to anyone. Least of all Richard, who was a good cop but much more hardened than Frank would ever want to be.   
Frank wondered, though, what really made a good cop. Moral ideals, he decided, were above all the deciding factor in such things. A good standard of integrity was all that you need to be a decent crime-fighter.  
  
*****  
When Clarice awoke, the sun was red and very much in the west. She could only guess at where they must be; at the speed at which they were travelling, they must have been several hundred miles away from Baltimore...  
She breathed roughly, her heart touched again by the light of the world, even through the dark windows. The red of the sun was maroon through the tinting, and it looked like Dr. Lector's eyes.  
"What's the matter, Clarice," he said without looking, "you can look at the world all that like now."  
"I was remembering," she responded, with characteristic frankness, "all of the things that there are to experience. I had forgotten the incredible tenacity of life to it's will to go on. I almost lost touch with life."  
"Perhaps you would like to hear some music; or dine on some real food, not just prison fare. There are plenty of things to do, Clarice, all you need is to ask..." He did glance over once this time.  
"I can't possibly think of them all, Dr. Lector; even everyday pleasures seem miraculous to me...right now though, I think that I'd like to see an opera." She smiled.  
"That could be arranged..."the car slowed a little now, as they turned off of the main road and onto a long drive. "We are in West Virginia now, Clarice." He graced her with a fond sort of smirk.  
She looked out the window as a plane took off somewhere closeby.  
There was a little airport about five miles ahead.  
  
*****  
  
"We are going to see your opera, now, Clarice..."  
"At the airport, Dr. Lector?"  
He ignored this and went on. "There's a very good opera house that I know of; I'm a patron. I'm sure they'll let their dear Dr. Charon and his lovely wife have tickets, even on such short notice."  
"At the airport...?"  
He gave her a faintly amused, exasperated glance.   
"No, Clarice, not in the airport,...in Florence..."  
  
FIN 


End file.
